Vale Lizzie

It’s with heavy hearts we share that our collective and community has lost some sparkle last week with the passing of our friend and founding member, Lizzie Carruthers. With this message we honour Lizzie, our memories and her art journey.

Lizzie was a rare kind of friend, steady, considered and endlessly thoughtful. The hostess with the most-ess, she was our Chief Party Organiser. Lizzie was funny, she made us laugh, a lot. We shared a sense of humour and a love for the F & C words. She had fabulous fashion sense and knew how to rock a frock. She was as mad as the animals in her paintings were and we loved her for it. She was a straight talker and a fierce champion of us, her fellow artists.

She brought colour into the world, with her humour, style and art. People are drawn to Lizzie’s work. It is the identification of the animal, but it is the underlying story being told that holds the viewer there. It was joy to experience people engaging with Lizzie’s work in the gallery.

Her art career began making strides in the early 2000’s when Lizzie began attending art classes taught by Megan at the Otago Polytech. It was apparent from the beginning that Lizzie had exceptional observational drawing skills. Over the next 10 years Lizzie continued attending workshops and classes, developing her skills and animal portrait painting. Acrylic paints, oils and palette knives opened Lizzie’s work to a whole world of vibrant, luscious colour and texture.

Exhibitions followed, with Lizzie participating in numerous group shows including the Wānaka Art Society exhibitions, the Masonic Lodge, Central Stories Museum and Art Gallery in Alexandra as well as Dunedin.  She held her first, free-range solo exhibition in 2014 at Megan’s home gallery. In 2019 Lizzie became part of Hullabaloo Art Space, an artist’s collective in the Cromwell. Now a fully-fledged artist in her own right, Lizzie’s work continued to take flight.  Many initial animal paintings as we all know them were small, intense and jewel like. Although small they projected their personalities into a room. Then she went big. There were jokes around “go big or go home”. Not one to stay still, Lizzie started making larger than life paintings, working on doors and making some works so big they had to lean against the wall.

While exhibiting Lizzie still continued to develop her artistic skills, recently delving into print making and tetrapack printing. She opened her own studio and gallery at the farm. Just last year, as you know, alongside us girls, she set up Artē Collective.

Lizzie drew on her farming background for her work, her love of animals, her pets and her familiarity with them bought deep knowledge of their personalities. Through facial expressions, the twist of a head, clothing and a look in the eye Lizzie could create a whole back story. A keen observer of human behaviour too, Lizzie bought both elements into her work creating paintings that reflected back to us the animal nature of humanity and the humanity of animals.

Lizzie was the Queen of the clever title. She used wit, satire and humour to comment on politics and the environment. A memorable exhibition of her’s from 2020 was ‘Hen Party’ A celebration and homage to her mother-in-law who “loved a party, gin, hens and most of all family”, each piece is a tongue-in-cheek pun with titles, Cheryl Crow a well-coiffed hen with an impressive head of hair, standing at her microphone, evidently mid-song. Princess Laya, equally notable for her hair-do, is upright and determined, ready to take on the Dark Side. Victoria Peckham’s runway as she walks with grace and style. And a particular favourite — the rooster, Gregory Peck, a very stylish gentleman with a fabulous suit and a withering stare.

As artists, whether it is in the visual, literary or performing arts, we know the making of work involves research, experimentation, creativity, commitment and hard graft. And Lizzie did all of this. Behind artists there is often support and it this support which enables us to continue working. Thankyou to Phill, Hillary and Fiona for supporting Lizzie and enabling us to have a glimpse of her talent. Every work contains a part of the makers personality, their emotions, their soul or spirit. Those of us fortunate to have Lizzie’s work will always have a connection to her, a touch stone to remind us of her wit, playfulness and creativity.

It has been a privilege and a joy for all of us to be her friend and to be a part of Lizzie’s artistic journey. She leaves a huge hole, our rainbow has lost one of its true colours and our hearts ache for Phill, Hillary, Fiona and family.

Vale Lizzie, we will miss you so much.

With love,

Andi, Briar, Jenny, Megan, Sophie and Sue.

Art Beyond Luggate

It's worth mentioning that Artē Collective members also exhibit beyond Central Otago. Andi Regan currently has an exhibition A Place to Land at Form Gallery in Christchurch alongside artist John Hill. This runs until the 30th May. Megan Huffadine has work in a group exhibition at Art on the Quay in Kaiapoi until 26th May. If you live in Christchurch or have arty friends in the region, let them know! This is a great opportunity to get out and feast the eyes on new and interesting artworks.

Congratulations to Artē member Jenny Chisholm who’s painting Whisk Me Away won the Print Central Best Local Painting Award (a category for artists living locally) at the Bayleys Arrowtown Autumn Art Festival Exhibition. This exhibition is held at the Lake Districts Museum in Arrowtown and is on until 24th May.

Jenny Chisholm Whisk Me Away

We’re all busy creating art for our next exhibition

We’re currently creating new work for Airborne, an upcoming exhibition at Artē Collective.

Airborne invites viewers into moments of suspension and ascent: still summer skies, gliding wings, paper planes defying gravity, and forms that test gravity’s pull. Across painting, ceramics and sculpture, the exhibition explores flight as wonder, rebellion, biomimicry and the delicate tension between freedom and inevitability.

Working across our respective disciplines, each artist has considered the title and interpreted it to suit. Sophie Melville, Jenny Chisholm and Lizzie Carruthers are all painting, Sue Rutherford is making ceramics and both Briar Hardy-Hesson and Andi Regan are making sculptural pieces.

Together, as New Zealand artists based in Wānaka, we are exploring both the physical and metaphorical dimensions of flight: aspiration, fragility, tension, release and freedom. Some works may feel weightless and open; others acknowledge gravity’s steady insistence. Between them lies that charged space where lift becomes possible.

Please join us for the opening night party on Thursday March 26, 4pm-7pm. We look forward to sharing Airborne with you !

Collective Circles

How many scenes, scenarios, objects and characters can six artists magic up in a little more than a month? Artē Collective can manage just about 50!

Not long after our official gallery opening, the six Wānaka artists of Artē Collective in Luggate put our hands to work, producing a remarkable body of art for our very first group exhibition, ‘Collective Circles’.

Opening Friday 5 December at Artē Collective, the exhibition is a bold, summery showcase of 20mm round artworks spanning painting, ceramics and sculpture. What began as a simple idea, proved more demanding for much of the collective than expected; albeit a small surface, there is still a large amount of work involved due to tighter composition and necessity of detail.

With the gallery now fully operational and each of us taking turns on duty, much of the art has been created on-site. “Sharing our creative process with visitors has been a rewarding experience, offering an intimate glimpse into how each artwork comes to life. Some artworks sold in the gallery before the paint was dry, long before they even made it to opening night,” says sculpture artist Andi Regan.

The show highlights the breadth of the collective’s creativity: Lizzie Carruthers honours the birds that didn’t make the Bird of the Year podium whilst Andi Regan explores playful interpretations of the collective nouns for birds. Landscapes feature too with Jenny Chisholm’s soft, luminous skies and hills and Sophie Melville’s glimpses of our most beloved mountains. Figurative forms flourish with Briar Hardy-Hesson’s frolicking lake woman and juicy fruit bowls alongside Sue Rutherford’s ceramic wreath and contemporary still lifes.

 “Visitors can look forward to a vibrant group exhibition where the gallery walls burst with colour and life. Each artist has created a mini solo show. Starting from the same wooden circle, we have all taken our own creative path — resulting in a diverse yet harmonious collection.”

The exhibition runs through December and into January, with artworks sold directly off the wall — so don’t muck around! See these works while you can, before they’re gone.